#240 - Not in My Experience

This is likely the last post I will write before Melissa and I go on our vacation to celebrate our 1-year anniversary. I'd say you can expect the next one in a little over a week, and you can expect it to have pictures and maybe some stories.Everyone has always told me: "Oh, man, college is the best time of your life. You'd better live it up because you'll never get the chance to experience anything like that ever again." In a way, that's true. I'll never experience college again... but there are tons of things I'll never get to experience again. Their actual <message> isn't so much "carpe diem" as it is "middle school is terrible, high school sucks, college is awesome, and everything after that sucks".I'll tell you what:Not in my experience.Middle school <was> kind of rough... but only really due to internal factors. Everything you thought you knew about yourself changed and there's a stressful deeply-seeded desire to figure out who this new person is.High school was fine. A little more freedom, a little more responsibility.College was great - but not like "best thing that could ever be possible" great. College was extremely liberating and fun... but not without equal-yet-opposite costs. My experience in college involved a massive lack of time and money and massive loads of stress and responsibility.After college - THAT has been great. It's when you have all the freedom you had in college, but you ALSO have money and no homework! How could ANYONE not think this is awesome? I get to do what I want to do SO much MORE often now. My place is like what I want it to be like. I can cook my own food on my own stove. I can use the bathroom without having to put shoes on and walk down the hall. I've heard the same thing said about being single vs being married: "being single is so much more fun".Not in my experience. Being single was fine. You are who you are and that's that. Being married doesn't mean that has to stop. One of my favorite cliches: "getting married isn't about two halves coming together to make a whole, it's about two wholes coming together to be more than that." Maybe I'm atypical. I never much enjoyed "the thrill of the chase". Maybe that's for people who like roller coasters.I graduated almost exactly three years ago... and I can honestly say that the past 3 years have been, in order, my favorite 3 years of life so far. I think I'm going to leave it at that.Here's a totally unrelated photo:

Dominion: Adventures is fun.

Top 5: Things I Could have also Talked About5. For the first time in forever, I feel like my workouts are producing tangible change in my physique.4. Age of Ultron comes out in 3 (really, 2) days.3. Bike riding is a lot of fun and should be a much larger part of our culture. I wish our infrastructure was designed to be more accommodating of manual transportation. aaaand it's a great way to stay in shape.2. My thoughts on the future direction of the Column and/or the Life Tracker.1. My recent edumacation learnings about GitHub and successfully contributing to an open-source project for the first time.

Motto: What a Marvelous Accomplishment Preface:Before I get started I'd like to let you know that I'm writing this in a coffee shop. The following video reflects my current situation:

Okay, now that's done. Either strap yourselves in or bail out now. This column is going to be spectacularly nerdy and long. I'm writing exclusively about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Please note that while this is notthe first time I've written about this subject, today's post will be more specifically focused on the MCU. A Brief History of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: The MCU is a series of movies (and a television show) produced by Marvel and distributed by Paramount that exist in the same shared universe, each telling their own story while contributing to a greater, overarching narrative. Specifically, this:

Those are all the current and confirmed future MCU movies. I didn't include the television show "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." in that graphic bec…